Obama's Cheap Paper Clips Are Now a Fox News Talking Point

We realize here's only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cell phone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why The Atlantic Wire is unveiling a new late afternoon feature highlighting the day's video clips that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today: Obama's tell-tale paper clip, the NYPD behaving badly, and Larry David's dismissal from New York.

We were ready to say Steve Doocy went overboard on Fox & Friends this morning when he chided President Obama for proposing a jobs bill that requires a paper clip to hold together, but the New York Post ran an article that made largely the same points, along with calling the paper-clip "chintzy." The lesson: spring for one of the expensive three-ringed binders at Office Depot if you want to impress the News Corp. commentariat. [Media Matters]

John Calley, who led Warner Bros., United Artists, and Sony Pictures in a Hollywood career spanning more than 50 years, died in his home Tuesday at the age of 81. Calley was production chief, president and vice chairman at Warner Bros. from 1969 to 1980 and the odds are good that he helped shepherd along one or more of your favorite movies, including The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Exorcist, The Great Santini, Mean Streets, A Clockwork Orange, Dog Day Afternoon, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Blazing Saddles, All the President's Men and many, many, many more. He retired in 1980, but returned to run United Artists in 1993, then jumped to Sony in 1996, where he held the titles titles of president, chairman and chief executive office before retiring in 2003. At the 2009 Oscars, he was awarded the Thalberg Memorial Award. An excerpt from the tribute video is excerpted below. [Los Angeles Times and YouTube]

In The Atlantic Wire bullpen there is a 48-hour statute of limitations on Curb Your Enthusiasm spoilers after a new episode airs, at which point nobody can complain about jokes being spoiled or surprise celebrity guest spots being revealed. Which is why we still can't discuss the knockout climax of Sunday's season finale, or identify the Back to the Future cast member Larry mocked with an invisible violin, or the current New York City mayor who orders him out of town. But it's a good one. [YouTube via The New York Times]

For a look at how different media outlets package the news, consider how The New York Times' City Desk blog and the New York Post described the video of uniformed NYPD officers cavorting with revelers during the West Indian Day Parade last week in Brooklyn. TheTimes sees "several uniformed officers dancing suggestively with passing women, some wearing little besides bikinis and colorful Carnival-style headdresses" and "one officer [who] briefly simulates sex with a woman to the apparent delight of the crowd." But without the Post, you wouldn't know that before that, the officer "spreads his legs into a wider stance to more energetically thrust his pelvis into the rear of the dancer, with both of them bending over to better simulate a sex act." That's the kind of ace dirty dancing reporting the Gray Lady can't touch. [WorldStarHipHop via the New York Post and Daily Intel and The New York Times]

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.

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Ray Gustini is the author of Lucky Town, a forthcoming book about sports in Washington, D.C. He is a former staff writer for The Atlantic Wire.